Stone Speech

What we can know for sure about the past is limited in scope, but it does not seem unreasonable that a multitude of intelligent people, sharpening and refining each other’s ideas, can approach something very reasonable. It is on this premise, I believe, that the study of prehistory can be conducted. It’s still a difficult field to speculate in and that, I imagine, is the appeal of figurines.

For me, there’s a mental connection I can feel with those civilizations which have discovered writing. A lot of my work this year has involved struggling through translations of ancient texts. What stands out to me, should I ever complete that particular task successfully, is how intelligible the sentiments are. The struggle for comprehension, in this case, is purely superficial. It is not hermeneutically difficult, it’s technically difficult. Not to say there aren’t ambiguities, but in majority the voice coming through is one that can be understood, though 5000 years away.

I do not think it is to be supposed that the human mind needed the invention of writing to become intelligible. But, in general, physical remains are more evocative than articulate. Figurines, with their faces, with their shapes, speak of intention in a way that a burial only does less obviously, on a level below discourse. A bearded gentleman, with a happy expression, from 5000 years ago speaks in a way closer to text, farther from mystery.

Nevertheless, it is still presumably the mystery which enchants us. Perhaps it is that we feel closer, w e feel meaning to be something obtainable with work, a speech which can be recovered. It is one thing to suggest meanings for what seems basically unrecoverable, like a ritual object placed with a skeleton—it’s almost as if there is no risk to be had there, and it is certainly the case that these essentially unarticulated artifacts can be marshaled in a number of directions. A little clay person, or a little clay animal, seems to demand something of encounter, with us. It seems to wish to be spoken to, only, the words are not as obvious as they seem to be, the meaning not as clear as what we would like to imagine. I think this is what is behind the initial identification of the Catal Hoyuk figurines as mother goddesses—along with any number of similarly shaped figurines from elsewhere—and the rather more belated recognition of difference, uniqueness, and complexity.

Just as an idle thought, I can reflect easily how text based our culture is. Right now, this paper is being written—perhaps like many another on here—to the accompaniment of Gchat, facebook, and an open article to be read for next week. Likewise, I am—right now—writing this piece, rather than preparing my thoughts mentally for a verbal presentation of sentiment. I wonder if we would be more attuned to the practice of non-textual inscription—symbolism, upon bone, upon clay—if we weren’t so inundated with text, our own primary form of professional expression. Which is not to say, of course, that we do not have non-textual inscription. It is simply something to wonder just how much meaning could be inscribed in figuring, in the absence of textual inscription, and what we may be missing, lacking such an appreciation.